Know Thyself

Melissa Stanley

Philosophy midterm

January 30, 2005

Know Thyself

For the great philosopher Socrates, asking questions and seeking answers to all of life's questions was a life long pursuit. Socrates believed that the whole point of life was to examine and question it. He believed that the unexamined life is not worth living. The command Ð''Know Thyself' reflects Socrates mission and lifelong endeavor in many aspects. For Socrates believed that if you didn't know yourself, or seek to know yourself, then you knew nothing. There are two very important concepts of the Greek culture that help to explain Socrates mission, these would be the idea of telos and arÐ"Єte. Also being able to understand how knowledge, wisdom and learning can help to Ð''know thyself'.

When speaking of Socrates and his goal in life, which was to help others better understand themselves and the world, it is imperative that one mentions the Greek concepts of telos and arÐ"Єte. Telos was to have a goal, or purpose. The Greeks believed that everything in life had a telos, and fulfillment of your telos was a completion of self. It was believed that perfection of the goal, of self, is the same for all of us, that it was in our human nature. ArÐ"Єte was being or having excellence in life, having virtue.

ArÐ"Єte would seem to be of more importance to Socrates because Socrates believed that virtue, or ArÐ"Єte, is knowledge, and one of the most important things when learning wisdom and knowledge is being able to know what you do not know. Socrates claims that you acquire wisdom and knowledge through ignorance. Learning of any sort is impossible. If you know it then you don't need to learn it, but if you don't learn it you can't know it. The paradox is that you can't learn what you don't know. Socrates believed that you could learn anything-you just might have to go about learning it in a different way then what you are used to. In paragraph a of 71 Socrates says that " I am so far from knowing whether virtue can be taught or not that I do not even have any knowledge of what virtue itself is". In this we see that Socrates was always looking for an absolute answer, even though he never thought that he himself was always right.

In reading the Meno we learn from the dialogue that Socrates puts the question of virtue on the table, possibly to help explain how we acquire knowledge. Through a series of questions we begin to learn what virtue is not. We also learn that having virtue makes us good and is beneficial to us. Also, that all good things can sometimes harm us if not used right, but a virtuous person knows how to use these things in the right way. If one knows the good, one will always do well. It follows, then, that anyone who does anything wrong doesn't really know what the good is. This, for Socrates, justifies tearing down people's moral positions, for if they have the wrong ideas about virtue, morality, love, or any other ethical idea, they can't be trusted to do the right thing.

The way that Socrates questions Meno is fair in that Meno believes that he is right, and that there is no way that he can be proven wrong. Socrates sets out to prove that you can only be right if you are virtuous and since Meno is not a virtuous person by his definition then there is no way that anything he says in correct. If Meno knew what he was talking about and knew the correct definition of what